Mitis Forest
by Clairavance
Summary: Written for word prompt: Forest. From my OC's perspective. Nero gets lost... but it's not his fault!


Some of you may have the good fortune of knowing me, and most of you don't and will probably be thoroughly confused if I skip an introduction, so! My name is Mikael, and I have been my master's muse and shining fiction for... years. She wanted to write the prompt (forest) herself but came up clueless, and -lo and behold!- she handed the reigns over to me.

Now that you know who I am, let's get on with the story!

Welcome to Fortuna Island where the skies are blue, the tuna is in abundance, the water is sweet, the people are friendly, and a dodgy guy with a monocle is in evil league with some old guy who had seen way too much sun back in the day.

Both are power hungry individuals, and would get involved in a sick love triangle; see Quazimodo the gay science geek is in love with age-spotted Mr. Holiness, but Mr. Holiness is blinded by the seductive Ms. Gloria's fleshy twins, and Ms. Gloria seems willing to sleep with anyone who will take her to the top. Who knows, maybe she'll be the one to turn the stuttering hunchback straight...well, let's be realistic, she might sway him to become bi. See, a love triangle in the making! Though I'll emphasise that I did mean 'would get involved', as in, if they'd lived that long.

That's all my personal opinion on the situation, of course, but does not concern the matter at hand. No, no, dear reader, this is about the story unfolding in the mazes and streams and greenish shrubs of Mitis Forest within Fortuna.

Let's take a walk, shall we?

We find the young hero, the wayward knight Nero, seated upon a cluster of rocks in a pool of sunlight with his flaxen head hanging. His shoulders are slouched, and he has his hand pressed across his face. No, dear Nero-hater, he is not weeping or being emo, though his predicament would freely allow him either option without judgement. Hell I'd be crying if I was him, but this isn't about me, so let's refocus on the heroic young knight. He is frustrated and miserable and bored out of his mind.

But, look here, _what's this_? A funny looking shadow thing detaches itself from the forest floor, with an equally funny looking hat on its head. Freddy Kruger's spirit, is my guess. An amusing thing, nonetheless. The creature brings out pink claws that would make Wolverine blush in embarrassment. With a swipe of its powerful shadowy arm, the claws slice at poor Nero who is momentarily caught off guard. It slams him off his perch on the rocks and sends him somersaulting back into the mould-grown wall.

"-the hell?" Nero exclaims, managing to miraculously side roll out of the way of another blow.

He snatches at the shadowy being a couple of times until the shadowed cloak goes '**poof**' and something resembling a white camel spider drops onto the ground with a squeal.

The young man activates his devil trigger without a beat of hesitation, erupting into full throttle red-eyes and blue horned shadow demon and, to put it accurately, literally beats the crap out of the bug eyed thing by repeatedly slamming it into the ground. Not once, not twice, but enough times to probably give the poor thing brain damage.

Nero dodges back when the creature frees itself from his grip and the shadow cloak suddenly reappears, lifting Freddy back into the air. He must have kept a spare in between his... well, let's not sweat the details, shall we?

Freddy is pissed and is coming at Nero with both sets of long, sharp and manicured claws extended. But Nero himself is just as pissed, if not more, and charges, leaps into the air, and delivers a few crazy-ass sword combos on the poor unsuspecting critter. Nero lands back on his feet, with good timing to miss the strike aimed at him, and snatches the shadow cloak away once more.

The segmented pale thing that probably lived in darkness all its life until Dodgy-modo unleashed it onto Fortuna, again drops onto the ground. It tries to scuttle away from the angry youth but it just isn't a good day for the insect and Nero smashes it into an early and somewhat brutal demise (really, you gotta wonder what this kid's been through to be so cutthroat in his killing).

Lucky for us, Nero isn't afraid of spider/scorpion mutations, which is good news seeing as there's another two or three of the Freddy-wanna-be's floating around the immediate area.

The only thing that makes him squeamish are toads, which is the one thing he has in common with the black-haired girl sitting on the bridge with her legs dangling over the side. You may know her by different names. She prefers me to address her as Master, but seeing as I'm the one in charge for a change, we'll just call her Claire. She is scowling at a map before her and mumbling to herself. She does that a lot, pay her verbal monologue no heed.

"I don't have time for this!" Nero snarls under his breath.

His booted feet stop right beside Claire, who reluctantly glances up at him. "What are you doing?"

"How do we get out of here!" Nero asks, restraining his temper. How long he's going to be able to restrain himself, I really don't know. I don't do very well with keeping my temper under wraps where it concerns this specific female, but then he's a knight and has different morals and standards than I do, I suppose.

"There are more demons to kill. See?" Claire frowns, pointing at the floating garbage bags not far off from where she is sitting. "Kill them first and then you can help me figure this out."

"Figure this out? I thought you've been through this before?" Nero asks incredulously.

"Yes, I have."

"Then why have we been going in circles?"

"Because it's somehow different from Devil Hunter mode. There's more twists and things thrown in this time that I wasn't prepared for. Besides, it's not that bad," Claire says with a grin, "we're going to at least get an S rank for all the orbs we're getting."

"I'm beyond caring about ranks. I want to get out of this forest of hell." Even as he speaks, his devil trigger wears off.

"So do I!"

"Here, let me have a look," Nero says, and snatches the map from her hands to study it with hard blue eyes.

Now, if it had been possible for a gaming character to actually use his smarts independently, Nero would have been able to point out to her that there was a portal beneath the bridge which they haven't yet gone through. However, unfortunately for him, he knows only as much as the player does, and given Claire's specialty in forgetfulness, they would be going nowhere fast. In hindsight, it might do Capcom well to put a guide fashioned for idiots in their next instalment of DMC, for people with special needs. Like Claire.

"Well," Claire lets out a long deep breath, "at least, once we get out of here, it would be easy as pie for me and Dante to get through this mission because I'll look all-knowing and clever and cool because I'd know where to go."

Nero arches an eyebrow at her and offers a small, colourless smile that is more of a grimace than a real smile.

I had a party at my place not too long ago. It was really just to annoy the crap out of Claire since she hates having muses clutter up her space. I invited Nero with the false bribe that Kyrie would be there; truth be told I've never met Kyrie and I probably never will if it depends on Claire. I'm too perverted, according to her, and apparently even Dante would smite my ass if I was just being my manly self around Kyrie-the-virgin.

Then again, Dante would like to kick my ass, period, but I'm digressing.

Nero came to the party, and so did Dante. Neither of them would tell me whether Dante decided on a whim to join us – which is a possibility since the guy is a party-animal and has nothing better to do – or whether Nero had asked Dante to hold his hand and come with him so he won't be all alone with me. I'm guessing that my thought on how gay that would be being plastered all over my face was incentive for them to avoid the topic.

So, we got to talking and, as you'd suspect, the topic of the slave-driver Claire came up. Now, I'm not a gaming character so I'll never know exactly what it's like, but I feel for these guys. According to Dante, Claire had him running up and down and up and down the Tower-where-Vergil-perches-on-the-roof for a good few hours before her pride gave way and she heeded his pleas to ask for help.

I believe it was _Nicodemus Zamoran_ and _Blue Devil_, and possibly some other members as well since she'd spammed the boards, who told her there's a door at the bottom that she's meant to go through. After which, as Dante told us, she again had him do a few more laps up and down the long-ass tower before asking for help once again, and _Shadow _advised her that she's able to go through the door flanked with fire. You've got to pity these guys. And in case you have assumed that I have a short attention span (like Claire) to jump from Nero's smile to a party I held, you're mistaken.

This is all to explain to you, dear reader, that the grimace Nero offered little Claire meant that he's well aware of how hopeless she is at directions and clues, and how she was indirectly and unintentionally abusing him for her and Dante's benefit later on in the game. Although, he shouldn't feel too burnt by this fact. She did the same thing to Dante and flew through the missions with Vergil, but that's another tale for another time.

"How about we retrace our steps?" Claire was asking.

"Again?" Nero groans, and ducks to the side when a black floating booger tries to take a slice out of him.

He whips Red Queen from behind him and blocks the blow with a small explosion of golden sparks that has both him and the floater recoiling at the impact. It throws him off the bridge and he lands on his feet in the stream. His eyes widen and he sends a prayer of thanks to whatever being has mercy on him when he faces the purple ward before him, a.k.a me.

"I found our way out!"

"Well let's kill these mephistos first..."

"I'm going!"

"_But Nero_!"

"Gone!" And Nero charges through the portal to free himself of the never-ending forest of boring hell.

And this is my story of the white knight, Claire the goat, and how falling off a bridge was possibly the best thing that's ever happened to Nero.

-end-


End file.
